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i don’t actually eat them

Just to clarify, I am not a cannibal. I don’t actually eat people’s freckles. Yes, I may lick them from time to time, but I do not literally ingest them. So if you came here looking for a how-to blog about cutting freckles out of people’s skin, or are expecting tips on the best way to include them in your favorite morning dishes, you’ve come to the wrong place (and you may want to seek professional help). Although I will admit that it’s a grotesquely interesting topic and someone should make a horror film about it.

So no, I don’t eat freckles. But I see them, I touch them, I absorb them. I take them into my memory, into myself. I consume them. Freckles are fascinating things. You can be born with them, you can acquire them from the sun, you can develop them as you age. They can be a multitude of shapes and sizes and colors and not one is exactly like another. You can connect them into lines and shapes, create constellations and works of art. They carry a certain importance on their tiny freckly shoulders. Whether you hate them and want to burn them all off your body or love them and want to build a shrine to worship them, they’re a part of you.

No, freckles don’t define a person. On the contrary; you might know someone extremely well, know almost everything about them and yet you may never know all of their freckles. They’re easily overlooked. Have you noticed your best friend’s freckles? Your mother’s? Your girlfriend’s? Can you tell me where they are and what they look like? Maybe a few of them. Most likely not all. But that doesn’t mean you don’t know the person. There are many ways, big and small, to know someone, and freckles are some of the tiniest. That’s what makes them special.

I like knowing people. I like learning details. If I consciously acknowledge and remember one of your freckles, I know you in a way that differs from knowing your favorite color or the name of your childhood goldfish. I might know your life’s story, but knowing a single freckle on your body is a different thing entirely. Freckles are another layer, on the surface but often looked over, and they signify intimacy.

Which brings me to breakfast. To me, breakfast is the most intimate meal of the day. I wake up with dreams tumbling through my mind. I’m a very vivid, often lucid, dreamer, and nine times out of ten I wake up remembering my dreams in their entirety, or at least in large segments. Breakfast is a time for me to sit and mull over my dreams. I sort them, releasing the ones I don’t want to keep and repeating the ones I do, running them over and over in my head until they stick. And if I don’t have any dreams to ponder, I use this time to simply think. I don’t like going out to breakfast. If we’re having breakfast together that means we woke up together, which means I probably know a few of your freckles. And I’m probably going to mention them here.

So no cannibalistic cooking tips, no morning recipes, just intimacy, connection, dreams, reflection, and a whole bunch of other things that I couldn’t possibly have foretold when naming my blog.